Texas state legislators have apparently had enough of the endless arguments over evolution and other charged topics that regularly put the state’s Board of Education in the national spotlight. The Wall Street Journal reports they are considering stripping the Board of its authority to set curricula and approve textbooks.
While the science standards have drawn the most attention, the 15-member elected board has been embroiled in other controversies as well. Last year, it rejected a reading curriculum that teachers had spent nearly three years drafting. In its place, the board approved a document that a few members hastily assembled just hours before the vote.
Various proposals being drawn up in Texas would transfer curriculum oversight and textbook adoptions to the state education agency, a legislative board or the commissioner of education. “Other bills would transform the board to an appointed rather than elected body, require Webcasting of meetings, and take away the board’s control of a vast pot of school funding,” the Journal reports.
The Texas Board of Education voted Thursday to drop a 20-year old state requirement that high school science teachers cover “strengths and weaknesses” in the theory of evolution. The vote is being characterized as a major defeat for social conservatives and sharply divided the Board.
“Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the ’strengths and weaknesses’ of Charles Darwin’s theory that man evolved from lower forms of life,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
A panel of science teachers had recommended that the “strengths and weaknesses” language be dropped. Critics had argued that the word weaknesses “has become a code word in the culture wars to attack evolution and promote creationism.” The Texas science standards have ripple effects from coast-to-cost, influencing how textbook publishers publishers handle the topic, since the Lone Star state is the largest statewide textbook adoption state.
Proponents of a more traditional, rigorous approach to teaching mathematics should read this piece from the Los Angeles Times about the success a struggling Hollywood elementary school has enjoyed with Singapore Math.
Several Core Knowledge schools have reported strong results from Singapore and Saxon math programs, and the paper does a good job of showing why. Describing what appears to be a standard timed drill (the dreaded “drill and kill” that reform advocates blithely dismiss) the Times smartly reports: “What isn’t obvious to a casual observer is that this drill is carefully thought out to reinforce patterns of mathematical thinking that carry through the curriculum. ‘These are ‘procedures with connections,’ math coach Robin Ramos said, arranged to convey sometimes subtle points. This thoughtfulness — some say brilliance — is the true hallmark of the Singapore books, advocates say.”
As the paper notes, California recently became the first state to include the Singapore series on its list of state-approved elementary math texts, and will subsidize schools’ purchase of the books. “Being on the list puts an important imprimatur on the books,” notes the Times, “because California is by far the largest, most influential textbook buyer in the country.”
Also this week: an anticipated report from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which is expected to urge U.S. teachers to promote “quick and effortless” recall of arithmetic facts in early grades. Taken together, it’s a potent one-two punch that coupled with a rising tide of parent activism, may be turning the tide against reform or constructivist math programs like Everyday Math.
A consummation devoutly to be wished.
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